OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate individuals\' disaster literacy levels, their thoughts on disaster management services, and related factors.
METHODS: The descriptive research was conducted with a total of 480 individuals between the ages of 18 and 60 living in a province in the first-degree earthquake zone in Turkey. The data were collected with the Disaster Literacy Scale and the Disaster Management Services Evaluation Form.
RESULTS: In this study, it was found that more than half of the participants had inadequate/moderate disaster literacy. The total disaster literacy score and all subscale scores were found to be higher in individuals who had an earthquake kit at home, had an emergency plan, and had received disaster-related training (p < .05). The majority of the participants found the services provided for disaster management inadequate or very inadequate.
CONCLUSIONS: In this study, it has been found that a significant portion of the society lacks the desired level of disaster literacy, and the services provided for disasters are deemed insufficient therefore, there is a need for multi-disciplinary national prevention programs to enhance disaster literacy and preparedness in the community, as well as urgently supporting policies to improve disaster-related services. Additionally, due to their comprehensive knowledge of the general structure of society, public health nurses need to play an active role in disaster preparedness and increasing disaster literacy levels.

Collaboration mechanisms in humanitarian supply chains increase efficiency levels in post-disaster relief operations. The scientific literature on the topic is mostly based on qualitative approaches to identify the barriers and benefits of collaborative relationships between stakeholders. Thus, this paper proposes the use of system dynamics simulation to evaluate the impact on the average response time of aid delivery resulting from implementing different collaborative strategies. In this sense, collaborative strategies are designed for humanitarian operations in the immediate response phase considering elements such as information exchange, shared resources, and infrastructure. To design and assess the impact of these collaborative strategies in a disaster scenario, we analyze the case of the city of Bogotá-Colombia and the surrounding cities, we have used public information for building and tuning the parameters of the simulation model. The simulation model results allow us to identify the main factors that reduce the average response times to serve the affected population. It can be concluded that the strategy which includes sharing resources and infrastructure, exchanging information, and the creation of joint knowledge has a greater improvement in response times becoming the best policy for disaster management given the results obtained in a collaborative planning environment.

For a Closed Loop Supply Chain (CLSC), disaster is a risk source of unknown-unknowns, which may result in production disruptions with significant consequences on -but not limited to-profitability. For this reason, we provide a System Dynamics (SD)-based analysis for disaster events on the operation of CLSCs in order to study the system response (production/collection/disassembly/remanufacturing/recycling rates, inventories, cost, profit). This response is examined through the dynamics at a manufacturer, parts producer, collector, and disassembly center level, by providing control mechanisms for resilient CLSCs under disaster effects. In this dynamic analysis, COVID-19 is treated as a disaster event. Five different business scenario settings are presented for the manufacturer, which are considered as alternative mitigation policies in responding to product demand. The extensive simulation results provide insights for policy-makers, which depend on the reduction in manufacturer\'s production, reduction in product demand and duration of recovery period which are considered as causal effects due to the COVID-19 outbreak. For all combinations, holding base stocks during the pre-disaster period is proposed as the best mitigation policy in terms of manufacturer\'s inventory. In terms of economic impact, holding base stocks or coordination with third party are revealed as the best choice depending on the combination, while remote inventory policy adoption as the worst choice.

An Air India Express Flight AI1344 travelling from Dubai to Calicut (Kozhikode), when attempting to land, unfortunately, overshot the runway and crashed causing many casualties as the impact caused the aircraft to break up into multiple pieces. The response to a disaster, specifically an aviation disaster, is highly complex. It involves multiple government agencies and calls for a truly inter/multidisciplinary response from diverse domains including forensic experts, fire experts, aeronautical engineers, humanitarian experts who must together form an ideal post-rescue recovery team. The author was intricately involved in the recovery mission launched after the above air disaster. This case study considers the process of collecting and managing the personal effects of those affected along with the various challenges involved.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has experienced numerous hydrometeorological disasters along with it. The pandemic has made disaster relief work more challenging for humanitarian organizations and governments. This study aims to provide an overview of the topics/issues of concern in the countries while responding to hydrometeorological extreme events (e.g., floods and cyclones) during the pandemic. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a computational topic modeling technique, is employed to reduce the numerous (i.e., 1771) humanitarian reports/news to key terms and meaningful topics for 24 countries. Several insights are derived from the LDA results. It is identified that countries have suffered multiple crises (such as locust attacks, epidemics and conflicts) during the pandemic. Maintaining social distancing while disaster evacuation and circumventing the lockdown for relief work have been difficult. Children are an important topic for most countries; however, other vulnerable groups such as women and the disabled also need to be focused upon. Hygiene is not a highly weighted topic, which is of concern during a pandemic that mandates good sanitation to control it effectively. However, health is of great importance for almost all countries. The novelty of the paper lies in its interdisciplinary approach (usage of a computational technique in disaster management studies) and the timely examination of disaster management experiences during the ongoing pandemic. The insights presented in the study may be helpful for researchers and policy-makers to initiate further bottom-up work to address the challenges in responding to hydrometeorological disasters during a pandemic.

Disaster is a state of serious disruptions in the functionality of any society or county. Disasters pose serious economic or environmental impacts that surpass the capacity of the affected country or society to compete with the use of their assets. Recently, Pakistan significantly prone to health disasters due to COVID-19 among developing South Asian countries. The long-term impact of health disasters and other natural hazards put additional pressure mostly on the government\'s economic policy. It forces the government to follow a constructive approach like a disaster relief-based approach rather than a conventional mitigation management formation to reduce the impact of disaster risk. This study elaborates on the main issues associated with disaster preparedness as well as recovery of the economy and businesses of the country. For Scientific risk performance analysis, open-source data from the National Institute of Disaster Management (NDMA) has been utilized to study the current situation of COVID-19 in Pakistan. Results show Pakistan has been facing a highly vulnerable situation as more than three hundred and fifty thousand confirmed cases have been reported. Poor health and technical management facilities have been exposed against COVID-19 as Pakistan has a low heath budget because of its declining GDP growth rate in the world. This research will help in disaster preparedness and the development of a disaster risk management framework while designing strategies to deal with such pandemics in the future.

This article examines the role of self-organizations, the spontaneous emergence of order in natural and physical systems in disaster relief during the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan China. By investigating a selection of involved self-organizations, it adopts a co-production perspective by focusing on two cases during the process of delivering emergency responses with the government and citizens to combat the health crisis. Observations and case analysis have found that both government and citizen channel play a role in delivering disaster responses. In particular, self-organizations emerged in the process of delivering relief services are observed as a critical actor of change in terms of mobilizing resources and collaborating citizens to achieve personal safety and community resilience. First, government channels are primarily manifested in residential communities in obeying emergency orders and tasks. Second, citizen channels are practiced through the co-production of disaster responses mainly delivered by residents, nonprofit organizations and enterprises. The finding suggests that self-organizations in the co-production of disaster responses with the government and residents in Wuhan has been effective that eventually brought the health crisis under control. Policy implications generated from this health crisis may provide insightful lessons for government policy making and disaster management.

Due to many abandoned mines that are not rehabilitated, there will be illegal mining. Although the mining industry and government continue to prevent illegal gold mining in abandoned mines by sealing open shafts, it is not possible to close all the shafts at once due to limited resources. Furthermore, after sealing the shafts, illegal miners often create alternative openings to enter underground workings while little or nothing is being done to stop the surface illegal gold mining. As long as illegal gold mining is there, disasters associated with illegal mining are prevalent. Effective disaster preparedness and response requires a competent strategy. The purpose of this study was to develop a strategy that can be used for emergency preparation and rescue efforts associated with disasters caused by abandoned mines and illegal gold mining. In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were held with officials and experts on disaster management from the Council for Geoscience and the City of Ekurhuleni. This study indicates that the safety of illegal miners and communities near abandoned mines depends on several factors including the ability to identify and respond to a disaster. The study identified three interlinked themes within the report as strategies for dealing with disasters related to abandoned mines and illegal gold mining. These themes included emergency countermeasures and short-term measures, roles and responsibilities and communication. These interlinked themes should be validated through further research that involves input from the national disaster response community at large. This study will serve as a model that can be implemented in other areas impacted by illegal mining in South Africa.

In post disastrous situations, coordinated and integrated interventions aimed at relief and rehabilitation not only help facilitate reaching out to the affected communities in a timely fashion but also pave the way to channel scarce and valued resources towards end users in an efficient and effective manner. This article attempts to trace the origins and gradual development of \'inter-agency collaboration\' and the implications thereof for disaster management strategies in Pakistan through an analysis of relief and rehabilitation interventions undertaken by the Government of Pakistan in collaboration with local and international Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) and relief agencies in the ex post of the 2005 earthquake. Data for this study were collected through structured and semi-structured interviews from government officials, representatives of NGOs and relief agencies and ordinary women and men in the earthquake stricken localities of Balakot and Mansehra districts of Pakistan. On the heels of the 2005 earthquake, both local NGOs and faith-based organisations in concert with international NGOs and relief agencies from around the world rushed to assist Pakistan in it\'s rescue and relief operations at a time when the country was faced with the twin dilemma of both the non-existence of peculiar institutional arrangements for disaster management and a lack of the necessary technical and financial resources. The aftermath of the 2005 earthquake offered opportunity to the Government of Pakistan and the NGOs and relief agencies alike to transform their individual interventions into a robust and organised \'inter-agency collaboration\', which was later on realised in the form of establishment of a national disaster management organisation called the \'Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA)\'. The establishment of ERRA not only paved the way for avoiding duplication and wastage of resources but also ensued in reaching out to the affected communities in a timely fashion. The Pakistani case offers implications in terms of highlighting the salience of establishing \'inter-agency collaboration\' in other settings.

BACKGROUND: Disasters are an increasing threat to human health, but we know little about their impact on health services, particularly in low and middle-income settings. \'Resilient hospitals\' have been increasingly recognized as a cornerstone of disaster management. While various frameworks of hospital resilience exist, they emerged from pre-disaster considerations, and do not incorporate evidence from post-disaster settings.
OBJECTIVE: This dissertation investigated the impact of a large-scale sudden onset disaster in a tertiary hospital in Nepal, and explored its resilience mechanisms.
METHODS: This consists of an in-depth case-study combining quantitative data from routinely generated hospital records and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with hospital staff. We used both advanced statistical methods and mixed inductive and deductive coding to analyze the data.
RESULTS: Most of the admitted earthquake victims required surgical interventions and long hospitalizations, considerably straining the hospital. For six weeks, the average number of daily admissions decreased. During this period, the share of injury-related admissions was particularly high, and such admissions were particularly long compared to the baseline. Admissions due to other conditions relatively decreased and were shorter. We found that the hospital\'s resilience was highly dependent on emerging adaptations, in addition to the pre-existing disaster plan. Individual resilience of staff also played a major role, and was influenced by senses of safety, meaningfulness, and belonging.
CONCLUSIONS: Hospitals should prepare resources and plan for their known disaster risks, but should also allow for a certain flexibility to innovative adaptions to emerging, unforeseen challenges. Challenges faced by hospital workers should not be undermined, and addressing them will increase hospital resilience.